Honoring Our Past So We Can Be Clear About Our Future

Shared memory grounds, sustains and directs us in our communities and relationships, with each other and with God.  Throughout the Bible, God’s people built memorials to remind them of important events.  Their history and faith were expressed in stories told from generation to generation.

In continuing the legacy as our Family of Faith, we honor our past through our History Reflection process. By sharing with one another our individual and collective memories of First Presbyterian Church, we can understand who we are, how we came to be, and clearly look to our future.  As we reflect on our history, we see God’s hand in, through and around the life and ministries of our church.  By seeing where we have come from, we can better see where God is leading us for our future.  This History Reflection process is an important part in allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us to our next installed Pastor.

Your Transition Vision Team needs input from our Family of Faith.  To help reach as many people as possible, we are asking that each Elder gather information from your committees and any other groups you may be involved with.  The team has prepared a short set of questions for this purpose.  Additional conversations that these questions generate would be useful as well.

The questions will also be used to elicit responses via other methods, including Bulletin inserts, asking Deacons to use them during visitations, and in various meetings and gatherings.

1)      In your personal faith journey, what persons, events or experiences at First Pres were an important part of your spiritual and personal growth?  Please tell us about that.

2)      Can you share a memory or story, about a past event or action of First Pres that leads you to be particularly proud to be a part of our church? Please be as specific as you can.

3)      How did you come to attend First Pres and what keeps you here?

4)      What do we do well, or have we done well at First Pres, that you would like to see continue in our future?

Please give the input from you and any in your groups to the TVT members, any of the pastors, put it in the collection plate or give it to the church office.  Any of these will see that it gets to the right place.

If you have questions or other input on our History Reflection process, or any portion of the transition process, please contact Pastor John or any member of the TVT:

Curtis Porter, cporter@unm.edu

Carol Marr, Cimarroncorrals@aol.com

Judy Mead, j.w.mead@comcast.net

Kathy Yarbrough, kyarbro123@mac.com

Merri Lewis, mrlewis@q.com

Toby Smith , tobysmith68@gmail.com

John Oerter, johnoerter@firstpresabq.org

Lenten Bible Studies

            “Covenant and Grace” Wednesdays at 8 AM in the Conference Room with Rev. Mike Elliott  March 7th - April 4^th  Unbelievably, Lent is almost here already.  No sooner have we put the Christmas decorations away then it’s time to journey through Lent towards another glorious Easter season.  Join us as we explore the Lectionary readings for the Sundays in Lent.  Through the Old and New Testament readings for each week, we will explore the many Covenants God made with Israel as well as God’s New Covenant in Christ.  We will also talk about how the grace of God takes shape in those same covenants.  Please sign up in the church office and pick up your copy of the Scripture readings for the class.

            Rev. John Oerter will be leading a Lenten Bible Study Wednesdays at noon in the Conference Room, February 29th - April 4th, titled “Cultivating Character Rather Than Giving Up.”  

            As a part of your Lenten Discipline this year, consider joining a First Presbyterian Lenten Group.  Rev. Karen Hill will lead a group on Wednesdays from 5:30-6:30pm in the Southwest Room – we will meet from Wednesday, February 29^th – Wednesday, April 4^th.  This year, we will read and discuss “Back to the Well: Women’s Encounters with Jesus in the Gospels” by Frances Taylor Gench, Professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia.  In this book, Gench examines six stories of Jesus’ meetings with women; she takes on some of the most difficult passages in the New Testament.  If you have ever questioned the role of women in the gospel story, and if you are open to wrestling with the biblical witness regarding women, this is the group for you.  Please, sign up in the church office.  

John D. Oerter, M.Div./MFM

John’s mission in life is to help people experience and live out the transforming power of Jesus Christ in their life and community. He is a transitional ministry specialist and he helps churches prepare for their future.

John is married to Lucia Hutchison Oerter, who is also an ordained Presbyterian pastor. They have six children between them, and six living grandchildren.

John and Lucia love engaging conversation, helping people and communities grow into God’s Shalom, romping with their two rescue-shelter dogs, and moving about the waters with fly-rod in their hands … sometimes catching the living jewels that dwell in those waters. Lucia is currently serving Pontiac First Presbyterian Church as their interim pastor in central Illinois.

At the core of his soul lives a problem-solver: his work [vocation], hobbies [avocations] and past-times are all variants of problem solving. John works from Shalom and systemic perspectives routinely. Helping communities and individuals discern their vision and implement their mission brings him great satisfaction!

John is double credentialed as an ordained minister and a pastoral counselor (both degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA.) and finds the interplay of those trainings and techniques useful to personal, individual and congregational life.

During seminary he served a small rural church as their intern pastor, then served two churches in Colorado as an installed pastor, also practicing 20 years in varying forms of supervised pastoral psychotherapy (10 years in parish settings and 10 years in independent practice as a Pastoral Psychotherapist.) Following his divorce and return to parish ministry, John has served five churches in transitional ministry.  As a member of the Interim Ministry Consortium John taught transitional [interim] ministry as part of the PCUSA national faculty from 1999 – 2009